Podio Revolutionizes the Way We Work

If you’ve ever had a job where some manager forced you to use software you hate, Podio is for you. “We have a democratic view of how work should work,” says Podio’s Lilly Hanscom. “People work best when they have control over the tools they use.”

Podio’s tagline is “Work the way you want to,” and what the company offers is project management software toward that goal. Essentially, it enables you, the worker, to build your own apps.

Within an interface that looks a lot like Facebook did before it upsized the role of images, Podio originated in Denmark before launching in San Francisco a year ago. To date it has attracted 40,000 companies and other organizations in 179 languages and is available in seven languages.

“Because we are not a SV-based startup we have traction all over the world,” notes Hanscom.

Companies using Podio include Twitter, BBC and Conde Nast.

The service is free for the first five internal and five external employees/partners. After that, a premium subscription rate kicks in, at $8/seat.

There are around a thousand apps on site that you can install or modify if you don’t want to build your own. The service is available on the web, on the iPhone or on android phones. It is not yet available for tablets.

Inside Podio, you have a profile much like at Facebook and a social network of the people you interact with. Hanscom emphasizes that Podio is not another communication platform, but something quite different:

“It’s about doing the work rather than communicating about work. You’re getting the work done within that common platform.”

The company raised $4 million in Series A funding from a Danish VC, and currently employs 27 people, 20 in Copenhagen and 7 here in San Francisco, working out of RocketSpace.